Textual Criticism,Translation Studies, and Symmachus'sversion in The
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Textus 30 (2021) 43–63 brill.com/text Textual Criticism, Translation Studies, and Symmachus’s Version in the Book of Job Alison Salvesen Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University of Oxford, Oxford, uk [email protected] Abstract The late second century ce translator/reviser Symmachus took a very different approach to the versions of his predecessor Aquila. His renderings do not appear to have survived in Jewish circles but were much admired by early Christian scholars, thanks to their preservation in Origen’s Hexapla. However, for textual critics of the Hebrew Bible Symmachus’ free approach has limited his value since his readings can- not be easily retroverted, unlike those of Aquila or Theodotion. In the case of the book of Job, although Symmachus’ “transformations” (to use a term from DescriptiveTransla- tion Studies) differ in nature from the freedoms observed in og Job, while rejecting the narrow isomorphism of Aquila and Theodotion he nevertheless adheres quite closely to his Hebrew Vorlage. This offers the possibility of identifying elements significant for textual criticism in his rendering, including variant reading traditions or a different consonantal text. Keywords Book of Job – Descriptive Translation Studies – Symmachus – Aquila – Theodotion – textual criticism – isomorphism 1 Introduction Since Textus focuses on textual criticism, it may seem questionable to offer a contribution on the fragmentary renderings of a famously free translator in a notoriously difficult Hebrew book. Can Symmachus (Sym.) offer anything to the text-critical study of Job? In the past I have argued that modern com- © alison salvesen, 2020 | doi:10.1163/2589255X-bja10008 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the cc by 4.0Downloaded license. from Brill.com09/23/2021 06:04:17PM via free access 44 salvesen mentators should take the ‘Three’ Jewish Greek revisers more seriously in this respect.1 However, in contrast to his predecessors Aquila and Theodotion, Sym.’s approach to rendering his Hebrew Vorlage is far less predictable. Such inconsistency produces attractive renderings that were much admired in antiq- uity, but creates problems for using his version in textual criticism because it is difficult to retrovert his readings. 2 The Use of Ancient Versions in Textual Criticism Despite the Dead Sea discoveries in the mid-twentieth century, the role of the versions (lxx, Targum, Peshitta, Vulgate) in biblical textual criticism remains a significant one because, in contrast to the manuscripts from the Dead Sea, these ancient versions are complete rather than fragmentary. The lxx version has particular value in that certain books in the corpus were translated before many of the Qumran scrolls were copied; furthermore, they were produced in the Jewish diaspora in Egypt. Thus, they could in theory reflect textual tradi- tions varying from the mt.2 At the same time, all versions are translations, and therefore at one remove from the Hebrew text. This inevitably limits their use- fulness for text-critical purposes. Touse the lxx in textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible entails reconstruction of the underlying Hebrew of the translators, a technique referred to as retro- version. Retroversion has to be based on systematic study of the tendencies of individual translators in rendering Hebrew.3 Statistical study of renderings in different books of the lxx Pentateuch was developed from the 1950s by the Finnish school, aided by the critical editing of the text by Rahlfs and the Göt- tingen Unternehmen. This was a significant step in this regard as it avoided 1 Alison Salvesen, “The Role of Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion in Modern Commentaries on the Bible,” in Let Us Go Up to Zion: Essays in Honour of H.G.M. Williamson on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. Ian Provan and Mark Boda (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 95–112. 2 See the clear exposition of the challenges of using the versions in Emanuel Tov, Textual Criti- cism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed., rev. and exp. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), 115–117. 3 The view of Anneli Aejmelaeus back in 1989, that the widely used term “translation tech- nique” is unhelpful since the work of the lxx translators is “characterized by intuition and spontaneity more than conscious deliberation and technique,” is still a valid one; “Translation Technique and the Intention of the Translators,” in On the Trail of the Septuagint Translators: Collected Essays, rev. and exp., cbet 50 (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 60. See also the essay from 1998 in the same volume, “What we talk about when we talk about translation technique,” 205–222, which argues for a rounded approach combining linguistic, statistical, and theolog- ical study. DownloadedTextus from 30 Brill.com09/23/2021 (2021) 43–63 06:04:17PM via free access textual criticism and symmachus’s version of job 45 the more impressionistic or “cherry-picking” approach of older scholarship to the texts. The advent of computers enabled the alignment of the Hebrew and Greek texts for comparison—the catss project.4 Although the categori- sation of individual books as “literal” or “free” is too broad to be very helpful,5 clearly some books are less amenable to isomorphic alignment or statistical analysis than others. Their unpredictable renderings are often ascribed to lack of competence in Hebrew or to exegetical interference, sometimes both. It is only recently that lxx scholars have looked to the field of modern Translation Studies, especially Gideon Toury’s Descriptive Translation Studies (dts). Such approaches provide insights into the apparent “deviations” from more obvious renderings of the Hebrew text, to ascertain which may be attributable to vari- ants in the Vorlage and which are due to either exegesis or “transformations” required by the process of translation itself.6 One of the pioneering studies in this respect is that of Theo A.W. van der Louw’s Transformations in the Septu- agint, which takes soundings from chapters from three different lxx books— Gen 2, Isa 1, and Prov 6. A particular contribution of modern Translation Studies to Septuagint stud- ies is to provide a more sympathetic perspective on the translators’ negotiation of difficult texts by taking seriously the overall effect of the rendering. One of the many contributions the field of Translation Studies offers to biblical schol- ars is to remind us that the original text is itself polyvalent, especially in the case of poetry.7 It emphasises both the possibility and legitimacy of different 4 Computer Assisted Tools for Septuagint/Scriptural Study. 5 For an early and nuanced discussion of the issues of categorising translations, see James Barr, The Typology of Literalism in Ancient Biblical Translations, msu 15 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979). 6 Theo A.W. van der Louw, Transformations in the Septuagint: Towards an Interaction of Septu- agint Studies and Translation Studies, cebt 47 (Leuven: Peeters, 2007). Responding to James Barr’s claim that “freedom in translation is not a tangible method, so suitably to be grasped and comprehended” (Barr, Typology of Literalism, 7), Van der Louw counters that one pur- pose of his own study is “to show that ‘free renderings’ can be grasped and comprehended. Although transformations were not always employed consistently, they often have a logic in their own right”;Transformations, 9. A more recent application of dts to Septuagint Studies is the monograph by Cameron Boyd-Taylor, Reading between the Lines:The Interlinear Paradigm forSeptuagintStudies, bts 8 (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), and especially his analysis of og Job 41:17– 26 from the perspective of dts (393–429) and descriptive profile of the book in terms of its translational norms and acceptability (425). 7 See Matthew Reynolds, The Poetry of Translation: From Chaucer and Petrarch to Homer and Logue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 22, who insists on “the finally ungraspable nature of the literary text” because of its own multiple meanings even before any attempt at translation is made, and the danger of “a recurrent line of argument which conjures up a fantasy of perfect translation—of a work that is miraculously the same as its source despite Textus 30 (2021) 43–63 Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 06:04:17PM via free access 46 salvesen renderings, shaped by the expectations of the target readership, as well as the personal choices and education of the translator.This leads us to a better appre- ciation of the translated books of the lxx corpus as multidimensional cultural artefacts, rather than primarily sources for us to plunder for text-critical pur- poses or to criticise when they do not conform to our own expectations of a competent rendering of the Hebrew.8 Too often in biblical scholarship one still encounters the phrase, “the meaning of the Hebrew,” as if this was obvious and unambiguous. Such attitudes also overlook the fact that our own perceptions of the text’s meaning have been shaped by two millennia of scholarship and translations. The Old Greek (og) translations clearly became self-standing Greek texts very shortly after their creation, even if some could be used as cribs to the Hebrew for a few readers. Even in the case of books we regard as less close to the details and order of the Hebrew wording (such as lxx Isaiah, lxx Proverbs, and og Job), their readers would have accepted that they were faithful repre- sentations of the overall message to the present generation in its own cultural context.9 existing in the changed circumstances of a different language and culture.” Lawrence Venuti makes a similar point: “The source text is never accessible in some direct, unmediated man- ner; it is always already mediated, whether it is read in the source language or translated into the receiving language”; The Translation Studies Reader, 3rd ed.